UK greenhouse gasses higher than stated

Greenbang is reading the Sunday papers and came across this in the Times – the UK has higher greenhouse gasses than the government has claimed.

Of course, being the Sunday Times, it accuses Labour of failing to inform the public.

Yet the figures come from the National Audit Office (although they aren’t yet published on the NAO website at the time of writing).

“The NAO analysis, published this weekend, says Labour’s figures exclude aviation, shipping, British businesses operating abroad and emissions caused by Britons holidaying overseas. This makes Britain’s emission figures seem artificially low.

“It also warns taxpayers face a £5 billion bill from 2010 to 2020 because government failures in meeting greenhouse emissions reduction targets mean it will have to buy carbon credits from overseas.”

Measuring carbon is tough – try out any of those carbon calculators and you’ll get a different result from each one. Energy companies will tell you your footprint is lower, activists will tell you it’s higher.

Goes to show you can make statistics say anything…